The delivery of drugs through the skin provides many advantages; primarily, such a means of delivery is a comfortable, convenient and noninvasive way of administering drugs. The variable rate of absorption and metabolism encountered in oral treatment are avoided, and other inherent inconveniences--e.g., gastrointestinal irritation and the like--are eliminated as well. Transdermal drug delivery also makes possible a high degree of control over blood concentrations of any particular drug.
Skin is a structurally complex, relatively thick membrane. Molecules moving from the environment into and through intact skin must first penetrate the stratum corneum and any material on its surface. They must then penetrate the viable epidermis, the papillary dermis, and the capillary walls into the blood stream or lymph channels. To be so absorbed, molecules must overcome a different resistance to penetration in each type of tissue. Transport across the skin membrane is thus a complex phenomenon. However, it is the cells of the stratum corneum which present the primary barrier to absorption of topical compositions or transdermally administered drugs. The stratum corneum is a thin layer of dense, highly keratinized cells approximately 10-15 microns thick over most of the body.
In order to increase skin permeability, and in particular to increase the permeability of the stratum corneum (i.e., so as to achieve enhanced penetration, through the skin, of the drug to be administered transdermally), the skin may be pretreated with a penetration enhancing agent (or "permeation enhancer", as sometimes referred to herein) prior to application of a drug. Alternatively, and preferably, a drug and a permeation enhancer are delivered concurrently.
The present invention is directed to a novel composition for enhancing the penetration of pharmacologically active agents through skin, the composition based on a sorbitan ester as will be described herein. The composition may or may not contain an aliphatic alcohol as an additional component. The sorbitan ester compositions of the invention have been found by the inventors herein to be particularly effective in enhancing the penetration of pharmaceutically active agents through skin.
While there are a number of patents and publications available which relate to the transdermal administration of drugs and to skin permeation enhancer compositions, applicants are unaware of any art which suggests that sorbitan esters are useful as permeation enhancers in the absence of additional permeation enhancing compounds or which describes the sorbitan ester/aliphatic alcohol compositions as described and claimed herein.